History of the Welsh language
[2] Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that the evolution in syllabic structure and sound pattern was complete by around 550, and labelled the period between then and about 800 "Primitive Welsh".
[5] Section 20 of the Act banned the use of the language in court proceedings[6] and those who solely spoke Welsh and did not speak English could not hold government office.
[5] The Act's primary function was to create uniform control over the now united England and Wales; however, it laid a foundation for the superiority of classes through the use of language.
Early work by Welsh lexicographic pioneers such as Daniel Silvan Evans ensured that the language was documented as accurately as possible.
Despite these outward signs of health, it was during the nineteenth century that English replaced Welsh as the most widely spoken language within the country.
Welsh was increasingly restricted in scope to the non-conformist religious chapels, who would teach children to read and write in Sunday schools.
[citation needed] By the 20th century, the numbers of Welsh speakers were shrinking at a rate which suggested that the language would be extinct within a few generations.
[11] Concern for the Welsh language was ignited in 1936 when the British government decided to build an RAF training camp and aerodrome at Penyberth on the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd.
[12] The government had settled on Llŷn as the location for this military site after plans for similar bases in the English counties of Northumberland and Dorset had met with protests.
[13] The prime minister Stanley Baldwin refused to hear the case against basing this RAF establishment in Wales, despite a deputation claiming to represent half a million Welsh protesters.
[13] The opposition against "British" military usage of this site in Wales was summed up by Saunders Lewis when he wrote that the government was intent upon turning one of the "essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom, and literature" into a place for promoting a barbaric method of warfare.
[13] With the advent of broadcasting in Wales, Plaid Cymru protested against the lack of Welsh-language programming and launched a campaign to withhold licence fees.
[16] Ysgol Glan Clwyd was opened in 1956 with 94 pupils in Rhyl, becoming the first secondary school with a formal remit to teach through the medium of Welsh.
Meirionnydd, Anglesey, Carmarthen, and Caernarfon averaged a 75% concentration of Welsh speakers, but the most significant decrease was in the counties of Glamorgan, Flint, and Pembroke.
[citation needed] Lewis's intent was to motivate Plaid Cymru to take more direct action to promote the language; however, it led to the formation of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) later that year at a Plaid Cymru summer school held in Pontardawe in Glamorgan.
[23] In a 1968 newspaper report the existence of a small number of elderly Welsh monoglots in the Llŷn Peninsula of North Wales was described.
[24] The leader of Plaid Cymru, Gwynfor Evans, won the party's first ever Parliamentary seat in Carmarthen in 1966, which "helped change the course of a nation".
This, paired with the Scottish National Party's Winnie Ewing's winning a seat in 1967, may have contributed to pressure on the Labour prime minister Harold Wilson to form the Kilbrandon Commission.
[27][28] The act allowed the use of Welsh alongside English in courts of law in Wales, partly based on the Hughes Parry Report.
In early September 1980, Evans addressed thousands at a gathering in which "passions ran high", according to the historian John Davies.
[33] In his speech Dafis encouraged other Welsh-language advocacy groups to work more closely together to create a more favourable climate in which the use of Welsh was "attractive, exciting, a source of pride and a sign of strength".
The decline in Welsh speakers in Gwynedd and Anglesey (Ynys Môn) may be attributable to non–Welsh-speaking people moving to North Wales, driving up property prices to levels that local Welsh speakers cannot afford, according to Seimon Glyn, a former Gwynedd county councillor with Plaid Cymru.
[39][40] The rise in house prices outpaced the average earned income in Wales and meant that many local people could not afford to purchase their first home or compete with second-home buyers.
[46] Plaid Cymru had long advocated controls on second homes, and a 2001 task force headed by Dafydd Wigley recommended that land should be allocated for affordable local housing, called for grants for locals to buy houses, and recommended that council tax on holiday homes should double, following similar measures in the Scottish Highlands.
[46] In contrast, by autumn 2001 the Exmoor National Park authority in England began to consider limiting second home ownership there, which was also driving up local housing prices by as much as 31%.
[44] Reflecting on the controversy Glyn's comments caused earlier in the year, Llwyd observed "What is interesting is, of course, it is fine for Exmoor to defend their community but in Wales when you try to say these things it is called racist".
[48] Following the referendum in 2011, the Official Languages Act became the first Welsh law to be created in 600 years, according to the First Minister at the time, Carwyn Jones.
[50] In 2018, the same writer mocked the Welsh language in The Sunday Times after the renaming of the Severn crossing: "They would prefer it to be called something indecipherable with no real vowels, such as Ysgythysgymlngwchgwch Bryggy".
A. Gill expressed the same negative opinion of the Welsh, further describing them as "loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls.
In 2011, Clarkson expressed his opinion in his column in The Sun that "We are fast approaching the time when the United Nations should start to think seriously about abolishing other languages.
